Our journey through homeschooling…for the sake of our Beloved!

Z: Rabbit and Electronics

Z is 2 years old and 8 months old now mashaAllah. He is a completely different character to R. SubhanAllah! It’s strange because when R was his age we started formal home ed and I can’t imagine ever starting that early again with Z.

Whilst R is doing her work, I occupy Z with his toys, puzzles, arts and crafts, videos and I read to him. I do try and give him a little of his own time each day as I feel that between the demands of his older sister and younger brother, it would be easy to just ‘ignore’ him and get on with it. But he is my child too and so deserves his time doing things with Ummi.

Z is a typical boy who loves cars, is obsessed with trains and fire engines and can’t keep still for more than a minute! He keeps me on my feet and I think were it not for his energy, I would surely be more overweight than what I am!

He is speaking more and more now mashaAllah and I find that whilst he was a real handful a few months ago, he is calming down a little.

Z loves everything messy and so when the arts and crafts comes out – he goes mad!

Two activities that Z recently did were real winners. And seeing that I rarely post about what I do with him, I thought I’d share what a typical two and half year old boy really enjoyed:

BUNNY EARS

Gave Z a large sheet of sugar paper and chalk. He drew all over the sugar paper.

I then folded another piece of sugar paper in the same colour into two and drew two ears which I cut out for him. Laid them out and he decorated them by sticking cotton wool balls with pritt stick.

After that, I cut the paper that he drew on into a large strip and fit it around his head and stapled it together. Stapled the two ears on to each side. And that was it! Bunny ears.

I can’t tell you how much he loved this. He wore it all day – through each meal and wanted to go to bed with it! Simple, easy, quick enough to hold the attention of Z and not too messy.

TRAINS

Ikea do a really good and cheap train set. Wooden tracks and wooden magnetic trains. The track pieces can make different designs and there are some bridge pieces in there. Z loves it and it does keep him occupied alhamdulillah.

So, my husband and R set to work on making their very own battery operated train. I guess this was an activity that all of them joined in.

Hubby took some old wire out of something, a battery and attached it all the to the train. R tested it out. And Z just wanted it to MOVE!!

I actually took a video of it to show that it did work but I can’t seem to figure out how to upload a video to wordpress. If anyone knows, please let me know and I’ll put it in.

Now, we could have just bought a battery operated train, but what would have been learnt?! R learnt some electronics and I guess so did Z and it was a much more thorough learning experience.